


champagne year

by riverbed



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Masturbation, Romance, bittersweetness, women doing more than the men they love deserve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 13:44:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5746024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbed/pseuds/riverbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night John decides to leave Peggy in Philadelphia, she privately makes a resolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	champagne year

**Author's Note:**

> I just love all the women in this show so much. I cannot not write about their stakes, their complex motives and decisions. They are all so brilliant and multifaceted and I'm in love and I will not apologize
> 
>  [it's not a perfect plan but it's the one we got](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYar6H-vMto)

Peggy knows the impropriety of returning home at such an hour, and she finds she does not care. After all, her father has been called to York City on business, her sisters retire early out of habit, and the servants would not dare speak a word - they are her friends and protectors, and they know that this is Philadelphia, her domain; they know that her comings and goings are her own, and that they can trust her not to scandalize the household.

From her maid she requests her water hotter than usual, and bathes for a long while, finding herself somewhat hesitant to scrub John’s touch from her skin. She knows the arrangement is temporary, and strategic - in all actuality, he was right when he said that winning the upcoming battle will cause a reversal of her father’s graces, and that he will welcome him into their family after the army defeats the rebels - but she can’t help the pang of desperation in her chest, the strange, abstract and completely irrational sense that she will never see him again.

She is also apprehensive about leading Benedict Arnold along. Peggy has never been a woman big on pretending, nor one to suffer pretense. She is known in Philadelphia as the quick-witted, spoilt but street-smart youngest daughter of a judge, a position in life that has poised her opposite any resistance to her will. André is an artist and an actor, accustomed in his role to the intrigue that comes with the behind-the-scenes workings that is war. She knows nothing of it, ever content with being her whole self, and she feels her confidence waver. She wonders what is expected of her. She senses that this is a job, and resents, a little, the implication that she is a pawn to her lover, wary that her sudden usefulness has changed his willingness to elope. She does not want to be a soldier. She does not wish to engage.

She wishes to lie with John and become his wife and devote herself to him. She would be happy to start a ladies’ club or charity to occupy her time when he needs to be away. She would be happy to stand beside him as his equal. She would be happy to forget this whole war, abandon gossip and family, and start a new life with him tucked away in a corner of the world that was a far sail away, exotic and perhaps tropical. She is not happy to languish and wait. She is not patient.

Anger boils up within her but she is still struck by tenderness for her John. She examines the feeling, rolls it over on her tongue like she is tasting fine champagne. She is not angry with him, she decides - she is angry with the situation, perhaps his occupation. Certainly she is angry with Clinton, with his superiors for driving him from Philadelphia and forcing his hand. Peggy knows John would gladly stay and valiantly face violence in her city, and she would delight in watching him defend it. In her mind there flashes a fantasy: John, painted brilliantly like one of the stage sets of his own design, come up against a bluecoat face-to-face, perhaps one of equal rank and physical prowess. Returning to her wounded in the side and with the red of his coat stained a darker rust in places. She would be his nurse given the chance, and that is not an honor bestowed upon many. She would lie him down and hold him while he breathed through any pain, any hardship. She would not tire. 

She puts on a silk chemise, for it is a hot night, and lets the thin straps fall off her shoulders as she crawls to the center of her bed. As she settles against the white blanket, her hand drifts down to her chest, cupping a breast in her palm as her other travels lower, ghosting across the skin of her belly. Her breath stirs and shallows, and she thinks of John kissing her shoulder blade, running his knuckles down her bare arm.

She remembers too vividly those first few times he looked at her, kind eyes dark like a promise as he danced with her incredulous sister. The first time he touched her, offering her his hand for the next minuet, was a spark coming off a dying fire, hot and sudden. Their first kiss, its intimacy a convincing case that he had been trying to devour her, impatient and frustrated and nearly bitter, rough in the garden after he had been humiliated by her father’s judgement.

She lets her legs fall open and finds herself wet and hot, and she thinks of strong arms wrapped around her and the scent of his hair falling in her face as he would bend and double over her, enveloping her in his strength. In her mind she hears sweet, unsure words he has spoken to her on more than one occasion in the depths of frenzy - words of love and lust and blind praise. The rock of his body, the solidity in the way he would lift her onto him and let her take control, gazing up at her starry-eyed as she rolled her hips and felt him fill her completely again and again. On those nights, she would not hurry, only pursuing the connection of their bodies and souls, less than eager to rush completion.

As her climax overtakes her, tears rush to fill her eyes and she blinks through them, swimming back to the surface to find herself still on her familiar, comfortable bed, in her own familiar, comfortable world. It is overwhelming, the conflict she experiences. Suddenly she is furious, defiant. She refuses to waste time on useless laments. She refuses to be anything less than what John needs of her. He will win the battle, and they will win the war, and they will carry on. All the rest is inconsequential.


End file.
